Subhashis Basu, the business head, dairy products, at Mother Dairy, one of India’s largest packaged food companies, talks about the market.
Are you seeing more demand in the urban or rural areas?
The demand for packaged foods is growing across India, whether it is rural or whether it is urban. We are seeing a huge upswing in demand in the rural segment. However, the last few months have not been so good because of bad rains – because the rural economy is still dependent on agriculture and agriculture is dependent on good rain. But if I look at the long-term trend, rural and urban demands are increasing. The category of products might vary. For example, ice cream will be more of an urban-led phenomenon. That is primarily because there is an absence of a frozen cold chain at the rural level.
Could you talk about Mother Dairy’s growth strategy?
We have grown into the second-biggest packaged food company in India. But a few years back, we were primarily a Delhi-based company with a very limited portfolio and primarily selling through our own retail outlets. We took a call that to grow we would have to evolve to selling across mom-and-pop stores and modern-trade stores across the city, and secondly expand the footprint nationally, and evolve our portfolio to value-added products from having just basic products. The first steps are to go into the urban areas because there is a huge urban market to be tapped in India, so even over the next five years our focus will be primarily urban markets.
What are the biggest challenges in the market?
In terms of the new products, there is dilemma among many manufacturers about how much to invest in new categories. We are continuously working on Indian formats of food and western formats and trying to find a bridge between the two. The cold [storage] chain across the rural areas and smaller towns is one of the biggest challenges.
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The Limehouse Golem
Director: Juan Carlos Medina
Cast: Olivia Cooke, Bill Nighy, Douglas Booth
Three stars
The five pillars of Islam
1. Fasting
2. Prayer
3. Hajj
4. Shahada
5. Zakat
SOUTH%20KOREA%20SQUAD
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The White Lotus: Season three
Creator: Mike White
Starring: Walton Goggins, Jason Isaacs, Natasha Rothwell
Rating: 4.5/5
The rules on fostering in the UAE
A foster couple or family must:
- be Muslim, Emirati and be residing in the UAE
- not be younger than 25 years old
- not have been convicted of offences or crimes involving moral turpitude
- be free of infectious diseases or psychological and mental disorders
- have the ability to support its members and the foster child financially
- undertake to treat and raise the child in a proper manner and take care of his or her health and well-being
- A single, divorced or widowed Muslim Emirati female, residing in the UAE may apply to foster a child if she is at least 30 years old and able to support the child financially
NO OTHER LAND
Director: Basel Adra, Yuval Abraham, Rachel Szor, Hamdan Ballal
Stars: Basel Adra, Yuval Abraham
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Mina Cup winners
Under 12 – Minerva Academy
Under 14 – Unam Pumas
Under 16 – Fursan Hispania
Under 18 – Madenat
MATCH INFO
Uefa Champions League semi-final, first leg
Barcelona v Liverpool, Wednesday, 11pm (UAE).
Second leg
Liverpool v Barcelona, Tuesday, May 7, 11pm
Games on BeIN Sports
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Sheikh Zayed's poem
When it is unveiled at Abu Dhabi Art, the Standing Tall exhibition will appear as an interplay of poetry and art. The 100 scarves are 100 fragments surrounding five, figurative, female sculptures, and both sculptures and scarves are hand-embroidered by a group of refugee women artisans, who used the Palestinian cross-stitch embroidery art of tatreez. Fragments of Sheikh Zayed’s poem Your Love is Ruling My Heart, written in Arabic as a love poem to his nation, are embroidered onto both the sculptures and the scarves. Here is the English translation.
Your love is ruling over my heart
Your love is ruling over my heart, even a mountain can’t bear all of it
Woe for my heart of such a love, if it befell it and made it its home
You came on me like a gleaming sun, you are the cure for my soul of its sickness
Be lenient on me, oh tender one, and have mercy on who because of you is in ruins
You are like the Ajeed Al-reem [leader of the gazelle herd] for my country, the source of all of its knowledge
You waddle even when you stand still, with feet white like the blooming of the dates of the palm
Oh, who wishes to deprive me of sleep, the night has ended and I still have not seen you
You are the cure for my sickness and my support, you dried my throat up let me go and damp it
Help me, oh children of mine, for in his love my life will pass me by.
